Live notifications: real-time updates without opening your app

Live notifications let you push real-time, continuously updated notifications to your customers’ devices, like a delivery tracker or a countdown to an event. On iOS, they render as Live Activities on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island; on Android, they appear in the notification shade with Android 16’s Live Updates treatment.

This is a developer-forward feature, available on Premium and Enterprise plans. You build the experience in your app with our native iOS or Android SDKs, then call our API from your server to start, update, and end the live notification. Customer.io manages the push tokens, so your server targets people by identifier rather than calling APNs or FCM directly.

• iOS: Define your activity’s data model and render it with your own SwiftUI widget. Set up live activities on iOS.
• Android: Use the bundled multi-step tracker or countdown timer, or define a custom type and render it yourself. Set up live updates on Android.

On a person’s profile, you can review the notification’s start, server-driven updates, and end deliveries on the Live notifications tab.